Consumers are shifting to digital-first commerce: Visa can help

Long before the effects of COVID-19 accelerated a global shift to digital for consumers and merchants, consumer spend was rapidly evolving from physical to digital[1]. In our “new normal,” online shopping has already increased 35% in the U.S. alone[2]. Which is why now more than ever, Visa is focused on helping merchants by providing them with an easy way for even more online shoppers to checkout quickly and securely.

Continued momentum with new ecommerce partners

To scale click to pay acceptance beyond existing merchants, we are expanding the Visa Digital Commerce Program for Payment Service Providers, Gateways and Acquirers by adding 27 new partners. As part of the program, Visa works with the acceptance ecosystem to create digital terminals, bringing the same ease of paying in-person, to the digital space for merchants and cardholders. Our 27 new partners include AdyenAurusBamboraBlueSnapCardknoxCyberSourceDalenyseGHLHSTiVeriMoneris Solutions CorporationNA BancardOmisePayPlug and WalletDoc, among others.

Visa and our partners connect more than 61 million merchant locations*, placing us in a unique position to help broaden our digital capabilities globally. Last year, Visa launched a new click to pay experience, built on the EMVCo® Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) specification. This click to pay experience eliminates passwords and the need to manually type card details and other information necessary to complete an ecommerce transaction once a cardholder has enrolled. While the new, interoperable checkout solution supports multiple card brands, online shoppers who enable their cards can use their Visa credit, debit or reloadable prepaid cards to pay when they see the click to pay icon at participating merchant sites that accept Visa.

We have successfully migrated more than 10,000 online merchants to the click to pay experience in the U.S. since January and are proud of the continued momentum. Now, more merchants and consumers in the U.S. can benefit from a streamlined payment experience — either integrated within a merchant checkout page or through the click to pay button for consumers.

Digital platform partnerships

To further elevate the capabilities of digital payment experiences, Visa is partnering with Mozilla to deliver safe, secure and widely available online payment capabilities for Firefox users. Firefox, brought to you by Mozilla, will be the first web browser to adopt click to pay with Visa as an extension of their web-based payment capabilities.

Similarly, Visa will continue to work with the World Wide Web Consortium to support standardization of our approach on web browser integrations for click to pay with Visa so that the security options provided by SRC can reach web users around the globe.

In an effort to further improve security for cardholders and the overall ecosystem, several browser players are evaluating the possibility of leveraging tokenization technology to power their form-fill experience.

Token time

A critical part of its design, click to pay with Visa incorporates an extra layer of security through interoperability with the tokenization standard. Tokenization replaces sensitive payment information with a unique identifier, or “token,” protecting the underlying data. The click to pay feature can also help boost authorization rates and reduce fraud rates when used with Visa Token Service, which was developed to create secure environments to help accelerate innovation in ecommerce and mobile payments. Visa Token Service recently added 28 new partners to further strengthen digital payments security globally. The latest lineup of partners will help make digital transactions more secure by tokenizing both one-time and recurring payments made with Visa credentials.

As the impact of COVID-19 continues to reshape seemingly all aspects of daily life and business, Visa remains committed to enhancing the future of digital commerce. With the extra layer of security and support of tokenization and strategic partnerships, the click to pay experience continues to provide consistency and fewer steps at checkout. By using these new digital standards for online payments, Visa is here to make couch commerce – a trend as ubiquitous as video conferencing – as convenient as shopping in your favorite local business.